The Kindness of Strangers
by MollyCarpenter
Summary: Routine research digs up something Sam never expected.


Sam's sleep schedule had gotten erratic after the second trial, which was why he was awake and dressed when Dean wandered in from the kitchen with a breakfast burrito in one hand and coffee in the other. He watched his brother sip at the mug with the familiar sense of irritation—Dean didn't even _like_ coffee, he only drank it for the caffeine, and he wouldn't switch to tea because of their father's indoctrination. But Sam made morning small talk and waited until the mug was two-thirds drained and the burrito gone before he said anything substantive, because the last thing he wanted was to try to have this conversation with Dean pre-caffeine and hungry.

When the conversational thread petered out, Sam gave it a few seconds before he said, "I want you to know that I wasn't looking for this. I thought there was a case, so I was looking at old records. That's all."

Dean looked up from his coffee, suspicion sliding over his face like a familiar mask. "Looking for what?"

Sam turned his laptop around so that Dean could see the screen. On it was a scanned police report. The name was wrong—Dean had stopped regularly carrying a license with his real name when he was about twenty—but the date of birth and vital stats were all right, and the picture was unquestionably Dean.

"Oh," Dean said flatly. "That."

* * *

Barrett had noticed the guy when he came in. It would have been tough not to, even though Barrett was about as straight as they came; guy was scary good looking, and most of the women in the room and a fair scattering of the men had actually watched him as he walked to the bar. He didn't seem to be looking for company, though, nursing one beer quietly. On a busy night Barrett would've made him move on, but there were plenty of empty seats in the place and he wasn't doing any harm.

Barrett walked reluctantly across to him and said, "Hey buddy, I got another beer for you from the guy over there." He gestured as the guy looked up and then glanced in the direction of the beer buyer. Barrett turned his head and lowered his voice to say, "But I recommend you don't take it."

The good-looking guy only showed a flicker of surprise before he laughed like Barrett had made a joke, covering his mouth to smother a grin as he said, "Yeah, why's that? Gonna get trouble for takin' a drink from a guy?"

Barrett shrugged. "Nah, not in this place. But Rick's an asshole," he said. "And I hear he doesn't always listen so well when someone tells him it's time to stop, you know?"

"Ah," the good-looking guy said. "Huh. Thanks for the heads-up, buddy. I'll take the beer."

Barrett set the cold mug down and slid it across, and the guy picked it up and tilted it in Rick's direction in salute.

* * *

Sam tried to keep his voice level as he said, "Dean…were you ever going to tell me about this?"

Dean shrugged. "What's to tell?"

"You were _raped_," Sam said.

The word sat in the air between them like a physical thing. Sam didn't like what his pulse was doing, speeding and slowing erratically, and he wasn't sure how much of it was the trials and how much was the astonishing rage that had come roaring out of his subconscious when he realized what he was looking at.

Dean shrugged again. "So they tell me, yeah."

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't get as far as the tox screen? I got roofied. Don't remember a thing past about four that afternoon til I woke up the next day." He leaned back in his chair, settling his mostly-empty coffee cup on his stomach. "I was sore as hell for a couple days, though."

The thing was, Sam had been watching Dean bullshit about his feelings since he was old enough to notice that what people said didn't always match what they meant, and he didn't think Dean was actually as casual about this as he wanted Sam to think he was.

"I can't believe you don't want to talk about this," Sam said. He was finding it much harder than he'd expected to act calm.

Dean snorted and said, "Dude, have you met me? The hospital gave me a bunch of pamphlets about hotlines and stuff. I tossed 'em." He took a sip of his coffee.

* * *

Karen was not listening to her partner. Harry was a perfectly competent cop but when they weren't actually arresting someone—and sometimes when they _were_—the man would _not_ shut up. Instead she scanned the sidewalks as they prowled along. The night was below freezing but not bad for a Chicago January, and she was looking forward to a coffee break sometime soon.

It was nowhere close to last call, so she was a little surprised when she caught sight of the guy staggering towards them, using one hand to hold himself up on the dark storefronts as he went.

"Dresden," she said, cutting across his description of the insanely geeky game he played on Friday nights. "I think we got one for the drunk tank."

Harry snapped out of his monologue instantly and drew smoothly over to the curb. "He's tall," he said. "Want me to take him?"

Karen rolled her eyes. "Please. I can handle a sloppy drunk." Harry was very tall and Karen was...not, so when they needed to intimidate someone who didn't know them he usually took point, but in fact she was much better in hand-to-hand and they both knew it. As soon as the patrol car stopped she hopped out onto the sidewalk. "Sir, can I help you?" she asked briskly.

The drunk had to roll his head up to look at her, and when he met her eyes Karen felt a stirring of doubt; his pupils were so dilated she couldn't tell whether the irises were light or dark and he had a dazed look on his face that went well past mere drunkenness. "Officer," he mumbled, the word barely understandable, "I think I need to lie down. I think…" He folded at the knees and collapsed. Karen got to him just in time to keep him from smashing his face into the chilly pavement.

She ran her hands over him, checking for injuries, saying, "Sir?" over and over. As she heard Harry's door opening behind her, her hand hit the distinctive angular hardness of a gun under the short jacket he wore and she tensed, but only for a second; he had the unique boneless sprawl of true unconsciousness. Harry's footsteps crossed to her side and he knelt.

"This isn't good," he said. "I'll call a bus."

Karen said, "Help me get him to the car first, we can't leave him lying on the sidewalk in this cold," and continued her search for injury as Harry shifted around to the guy's other side. They both spotted it at the same time: blood, seeping through the back of the unconscious man's jeans. In the bad light it wouldn't have been visible if he were standing.

"Shit," Harry said softly.

"He's carrying," Karen said. Their eyes met. "I think he's got a permit, don't you?"

Harry nodded in perfect understanding.

* * *

"Dean," Sam started, and Dean heaved a huge, put-upon sigh.

"Dad was hunting in, I dunno, Georgia or someplace," he said. "I was up somewhere around Chicago, one of those places where you don't know if it's in the city or not. I popped my trick shoulder when a poltergeist snuck up on me, went to the clinic to get it set and get some pain meds, usual drill."

Sam nodded. With a legitimate injury and no pressing case, it was standard procedure to get a prescription filled and not use it all, to restock the medkit.

"So I remember deciding to go to the bar, and _yes_, I know it was stupid, but it was my goddamn birthday, OK, and I just wanted to have a beer. One beer."

Sam sucked air through his teeth, startled, and flicked a glance at the police report. Sure enough, it was dated January 25th, 2005. Dean was smiling thinly when he looked back. "So this is where I kinda lose the plot, but the bartender said I was almost done with the beer when this guy bought me another one."

Sam sat up a little straighter and Dean's smile took on a malicious edge. "Don't get excited. Bartender said he told me not to take it, guy was a pushy asshole, but I did anyway and we did the sitting and talking thing while I drank it. And then pushy asshole left, alone, and I went back to the head and that was the last the bartender remembers seeing of me. Cops picked me up on the street right before midnight and took me to the hospital. They found evidence of—well, you have all the evidence they found right there. Cops went and talked to the pushy asshole but they didn't find any DNA on me, 'cause he was a _smart_ pushy asshole, and I didn't remember thing one, so what were they gonna do?"

"And you didn't—"

"I said he was smart. I staked out that bar for a week and a half, he never showed." Dean sighed, and set his empty mug back on the table. "Then Dad called, had a nest of nixies in Montana."

"And ten months later you came and got me," Sam said, feeling sick. "You never said…"

"What was I gonna say, Sam? You had enough to deal with, Jessica, your freaky vision crap, hell we hadn't talked in two years. How's that for a conversation starter? 'Oh by the way, some douchebag roofied me and fucked me so hard I needed two stitches in my ass. Because I went to a bar when I was on pain pills with a bad arm and thought I could take him anyway.'"

Horrified, Sam said, "Dean, no, that is _not_ how this works!"

Dean waved a hand in the air. "Yeah, yeah, victim blaming, whatever. Wouldn't've happened if I wasn't an idiot." He smiled again. It was painful to look at. "_Idjit_, even."

Sam stopped his teeth from grinding with an effort he suspected was visible. "I'll bet it would have happened, just to someone who wasn't as good at dealing with it," he said finally, when he could talk without screaming. "We can find him. His name's in the report."

"He doesn't live in Chicago anymore," Dean said. "I checked, the year I was living with Lisa. Figured I wasn't hunting anymore, but I could at least make sure he didn't get a chance to drug anyone else in a bar. Maybe if we're lucky he tried to drug a demon, or one of Cas's pals if any of them are slumming."

Silence fell.

"We could call—" Sam started, but Dean cut him off in the middle of a word.

"_No we can't_," Dean snarled. "Cas made it pretty fricking clear that he's got more important things to do than help us out, Sam, he doesn't have time to track down some dude who doesn't know how to take no for an answer."

"I meant...he could stop it from having happened."

Someday, Sam was going to get used to how Dean broke his heart, but it wasn't today, because watching Dean's face made him want to cry. Dean looked pitying.

"We can't," Dean said.

"Why _not?_" Sam demanded, unable to stop the frustration. "Look, I know you _can_ handle this, but Dean, there's no reason you should _have to!_"

"Well actually, there's a couple reasons," Dean said, in a perfectly conversational tone, like they were discussing the weather. "I know you know about everything that happened in Hell, or at least you guessed, and you're right, OK? But when a guy can skin you alive a hundred days running, man, the fact that he can fuck you too—it's just not _different_. It doesn't hurt any more. But here's the thing."

Dean paused to draw breath and, Sam suspected, to compose himself, and Sam held his breath. This was the most Dean had talked about Hell or Alastair since the year of the Apocalypse.

"What if when I went to Hell, I didn't already know that I could live through—that? 'Cause I dunno about you, but I think if Cas brought me back when I'd been, been working for them for twenty, twenty-five years instead of ten? I think that might not've worked out real well for us. I don't think Cas could've fixed my soul if I'd gone all the way, and I know for a fact I was real close when he got there."

Sam blinked. That hadn't even occurred to him, and the fact that it had to Dean was, he thought, pretty good evidence that _Dean had thought about asking Castiel this before._ A part of Sam's mind wailed in misery and he ignored it. This was not about his pain right now.

"Yeah," Dean said, with a parody of a smile. "The other reason is, how many times have we fixed _anything_ with time travel, Sam? And how many times have we made it worse?"

Sam shook his head angrily as Dean went on, "So if you tell Cas, he'll try, and he'll fail, and maybe he'll even make it worse, and then he'll get one more thing to beat himself up about, and I may be pissed as hell at him but fuck, he doesn't need that. Not for this. Not for something I can live with. OK?"

Dean stared across the table, sincerity written all over his face, and finally Sam made himself nod.

"Jesus, Dean," he said, his voice rough. "All those jokes you made about Michael."

Dean rolled his eyes and something that looked like a real smile appeared on his face. "Come on, dude, Michael wasn't my first rodeo. You know how old I was the first time some creep offered me ten bucks to suck him off? I don't think I even had hair on my balls yet."

Sam desperately didn't want to laugh but he couldn't help the snort that forced its way out. Dean had been kind of chunky as a kid, but puberty had hit him like a truck and by the time he was fourteen you could've found his picture by looking up "twink" in the dictionary. And Sam was wondering, in a fit of self-loathing, how often he'd missed Dean having to deal with...unwanted advances—when he was a kid, sure, but after Stanford too, probably.

Dean chuckled too, and stood up. "I'll be back in a couple hours for lunch," he said, and turned away from the table.

Sam couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't make his brother retreat faster—and it was a retreat, though Sam knew Dean was hoping he wouldn't notice that. But Dean rarely spent daytime in his room.

He waited until he heard the door close, and then ten minutes longer, and then he gathered his energy for a trip up the stairs to the main door, his cell phone clutched in his hand.

Outside, Sam leaned against the door, closed his eyes, and said quietly, "Castiel, you need to find a phone and call me, call _me_, as soon as you can. Something...I just found out about something that happened to Dean a long time ago, and I need you to call me at…"

* * *

Wendy was trying not to pity the patient in room 14, but it was tough. Despite his pretty face he was clearly not a helpless kind of guy, but he was in the kind of shape that just made you want to feed a patient soup. "Woobification", her online friends called it. Drugged, and raped, and they hadn't even been able to get any good samples because the dipshit rapist had been thorough and they weren't fucking CSI Las Vegas. Poor guy hadn't even woken up yet, because the Rohypnol was interacting with the alcohol and the remnants of painkillers, and the floor nurse had frowned about drinking on meds but even she had softened a little when Wendy pointed out that it had been Gary's birthday, according to his license. One beer, on its own, wouldn't have been a problem. (Not that Wendy believed for a second that "Gary Lee Weinrib" was his real name; she'd seen Rush live fifteen times and the man in her room 14 bore no resemblance to their lead vocalist. But she wasn't mentioning it to anyone, and there was no reason it couldn't be his real birthday even if it was a fake name.)

The only useful contact in "Gary's" phone was labelled _Dad_ and Wendy had called it with the trepidation of knowing she was about to give a parent nearly the worst news in the world—except the voicemail message was short and gave "Gary's" phone's number, as belonging to "my son Dean". She hadn't left a message.

When it was time for floor check she went along the rooms methodically. Everything was fine until she got to 14 and found a man standing over Gary's bed—probably Dean's bed—with his eyes closed and one hand placed gently on Dean's forehead.

"Who the hell are you?" she snapped, on a hair trigger. The man was too young to be Dean's father and he wore a long tan coat that made her think _flasher_. If this was the man who'd hurt her patient, he was going to be having fun with Security as fast as she could hit the panic button.

But the man turned, lowering his hand, and his eyes were full of sadness. "If you tell him I was here, he won't know who I am, and it will...alarm him," he said, in a surprisingly deep voice. "He'll heal quickly and completely, and with less pain than he otherwise might. It's the best I can do."

"What?" she asked, knocked out of her train of thought so thoroughly that she didn't even get alarmed when he stepped away from Dean's bed.

"You do good work, Wendy Banning," he said as he brushed past her, and Wendy shivered at the touch. She didn't think to move until he was most of the way to the corner.

She hurried after him, but he ignored her and turned down the hall, and when Wendy rounded it herself he was nowhere in sight, though she hadn't heard any of the doors. She stood staring for a good thirty seconds before she went back to Dean's room. "Well, it's a little late, but happy birthday," she said from the doorway. Dean didn't stir.

Wendy sighed and went to finish her round.

* * *

**samiam918:** Is RL non-con a trigger for you?

**FrancineBujold:** Hello to you too, Sam, that's a hell of a way to start a conversation. No, I'm good, what's up?

**samiam918:** I have name and data for a man who was a suspect in a rape in late Jan 05. I need you to find out if he did it, and if he's still alive, and if both are true, ruin his life.

**FrancineBujold:** Uh. Wow. OK, hit me.

**FrancineBujold:** Who did he maybe rape?

**samiam918:** You'll figure it out when you look into him.

**samiam918:**

**FrancineBujold:** …

**samiam918:** I know.

**FrancineBujold:** …!

**samiam918:** I know.

**FrancineBujold:** HOLY SHIT SAM DID THIS GUY RAPE DEAN?

**samiam918:** Dean doesn't know. He was drugged.

**FrancineBujold:** HOLY SHIT

**FrancineBujold:** OK give me a minute.

**FrancineBujold:** OK. Looks like he moved to Gulfport MS in 07, and...shiiiiit. They have a whole string of roofie rapes in that town. Started just about six months after he moved in. And you know, it's weird but the ones in Bolingbrook stopped. Bad luck must just follow this guy around, huh? :(

**samiam918:** Yeah.

**FrancineBujold:** Is it scary that I can hear your voice saying that?

**FrancineBujold:** Oh.

**FrancineBujold:** Oh Sam, this is creepy.

**FrancineBujold:** This vic looks more like Dean than you do, Sam:

**samiam918:** Charlie. Burn him.

**FrancineBujold**: Already on it.

**FrancineBujold:** So, uh, next time I talk to Dean...I don't know any of this, do I?

**samiam918:** He won't be pissed at you if he finds out.

**FrancineBujold:** SO not what I asked.

**FrancineBujold:** Sam?

**samiam918**: I just don't

**FrancineBujold**: Just tell me Sam.

**samiam918**: He's gotten hurt enough. I just don't want him to have to deal with any more.

**FrancineBujold**: This is a good plan. I like this plan, I'm happy to be a part of it.

**FrancineBujold**: OK, I want to get really creative here, so I'm gonna sign off so I can concentrate. But Sam, it was ten years ago, he's dealing. Not that Mr Happy here doesn't richly deserve everything I'm going to do to his bank account, credit rating, club memberships, parking lease, and library card, but Dean's OK. You know that, right?

**samiam918:** I know.

**FrancineBujold:** OK.

**samiam918:** Thanks, Charlie.

**FrancineBujold:** That's "Your Majesty" to you, Sam. ;)

**FrancineBujold:** *hugs*


End file.
